peak_bgr
New member
Well it was time to get the big one out of the way for my winter list. The plan was to get Haystack the same day, but you know how things don’t always pan out. We got a real early start 5:30am to be more exact, we would need every second of daylight to snag both peaks. We were in at Marcy Dam quite quickly, then to the Phelps Mountain junction and lastly Indian Falls. All of which were very fast sections on very hard packed trail. Skiers make very good trail groomers ;-) From Indian Falls on is where the snowshoes were really needed. There was still a fairly decent base but very inconsistent.
The snow started to pile up and the trees were bending under the weight. At the Phelps trail intersection the trail started to get blown in with very deep snow drifts. Lucky for us the snow drifts had a hard crust that even I could walk on. We soon layered up to be ready for the open summit approach, but didn’t hit wind until the last little bit. But when we hit it, it hit us right back, nothing to knock us over but very strong. The actual summit rock had the worst wind, and it began to pick up the longer we stayed.
We had thought about maybe doing the direct route to Gray, but let’s face it; we couldn’t even see Gray, much les walk toward it. That and everyone were expecting us to go to Haystack not Gray. We also opted against a visit to Panther Gorge and with winds like this and what looked to be a lightly touched path toward Haystack we descended back to the Loj. We returned to the Loj on an uneventful hike out at 1:45pm.
The snow started to pile up and the trees were bending under the weight. At the Phelps trail intersection the trail started to get blown in with very deep snow drifts. Lucky for us the snow drifts had a hard crust that even I could walk on. We soon layered up to be ready for the open summit approach, but didn’t hit wind until the last little bit. But when we hit it, it hit us right back, nothing to knock us over but very strong. The actual summit rock had the worst wind, and it began to pick up the longer we stayed.
We had thought about maybe doing the direct route to Gray, but let’s face it; we couldn’t even see Gray, much les walk toward it. That and everyone were expecting us to go to Haystack not Gray. We also opted against a visit to Panther Gorge and with winds like this and what looked to be a lightly touched path toward Haystack we descended back to the Loj. We returned to the Loj on an uneventful hike out at 1:45pm.
